Printed in the Summer 2025 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "Spiritual Aging: An Interview with Carol Orsborn" Quest 113:3, pg 14-19
By Richard Smoley
For the past forty years, Carol Orsborn has been a leading voice of the post‒World War II generation. She is the best-selling author of over thirty-five books, most recently Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life (Inner Traditions). Other recent books of hers are The Making of an Old Soul: Aging as the Fulfillment of Life’s Promise; Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection; and The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older (with Robert L. Weber, PhD). She has recently launched the Spiritual Aging Study and Support Group at Substack. She founded the Sage-ing Book Club in conjunction with the organization Sage-ing International.
I interviewed her via Zoom in January 2025. The full interview is available on the TSA YouTube channel. Following is an edited version of the transcript.
Richard Smoley: Much of your work in recent years has had to do with the relevance of spirituality to aging. Presently the baby-boom generation is getting old, if it’s not already. What problems do you see that may be unique to this generation?
Carol Orsborn: We were the generation of hope following World War II, and there were great expectations put upon us. We felt that whatever problems had not been solved, we were going to solve, and in our lifetime. We were going to be the harbingers of peace and the marriage of technology and spirit. We were known as a generation of seekers, and we were incredibly optimistic until, say, the last four to eight years.
Many of us have been holding on to the idea that the that the world was going to follow our marching orders and bring our ideals to fruition in our lifetime. It’s become very clear to many of us that that is not going to happen on our beat. Many of us are having to rethink our relationship to spirituality and try and find a spirituality that will go the distance, even in times like these.
Smoley: You mentioned that this is a generation of seekers. One major feature of this generation was a countercultural spiritual revival, and that has obviously born some fruit. I’m wondering if you could comment about its long-term effects.
Orsborn: I see a massive awakening going on right now. When an individual has a crisis or is in chaos, or falls into what I call the void, they have the potential to reconfigure themselves around the dark night experience.
That happens to individuals when they’ve gone through a divorce or a serious illness or a war. I feel that many baby boomers who were awake and alive and aware during the consciousness movement of the sixties, even into the 2000s, have spiritual practices that are have prepared us for this sudden mass awakening. And I feel that it’s happening.
Smoley: That’s very reassuring to hear. For many people, the biggest encounters with death often occur in middle age. They have to do with deaths of parents—seeing mom and dad go—which is of course a milestone for everyone. How does this confrontation with death shape your concept of yourself and affect the aging process?
Orsborn: In my middle age, at the age of forty-nine, I had breast cancer, so I was facing my own death. I had the sense that death was something that I could beat or overcome. And I did. I’m seventy-six now, so I’ve had a lot of years of life after thinking that I could die any day.
But when you’re old yourself, your friends are starting to pass away—and your loved ones and your favorite pets. I had three pets pass away during Covid. The losses that we go through seem endless. You realize that this is not rehearsal; this is real.
Even if I thought that I could prolong life, I now realize that death is going to happen to me. There’s no more kidding about it, and it makes everything that much more accentuated and serious. I think that’s the great accelerator of our spiritual growth and development.
Smoley: Our confrontation with death has a great deal to do with our beliefs about what happens after. Today many people seem confused about the question. They may say there’s a heaven and a hell, or reincarnation. Most Americans—80 percent by one count—say they believe in an afterlife. But there seems to be a profound uncertainty about what happens after death, and religion as it is now doesn’t seem to give much assurance that anyone’s really willing to believe. Maybe you could talk a little bit about our attitudes toward the afterlife, particularly as we get closer and closer to it.
Orsborn: My doctorate is in history and critical theory of religion from Vanderbilt, and one of the main things we were studying was the lessening influence of religion on many of us. We also examined the difference between a childlike relationship to a religion that tells you what to believe versus the spiritual developmental stages you go through that include questioning your original faith and reconstituting something that works for you.
There’s period of disillusion, of your belief system breaking apart, which is very scary. You’re out there, floating, not knowing, until it starts to come back together again, including a new relationship to death and dying.
From the hospice workers I’ve worked with, and also from my reading, such as Leo Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich (a favorite book of mine), they all say the same thing: no matter how much kicking and screaming and fear and regret there is—all that stuff around the fear of aging—there is a moment when you get it, and it’s often with your last breath—on the deathbed.
That’s what happened with my parents, especially my mother, who was a real fighter. She really believed she could control everything that happened to her. She was offended by the fact that death would actually come this close and take her. I was there at the moment of her death, and the room turned into sparkles. That was how I knew that she died. It’s hard to describe, but I felt like the world got fizzy. The line between life and death disappeared, and there was just this sparkling room.
A hospice worker was also present. Her phone went off accidentally at that moment, and her ring was “Hava Nagila”—the Jewish song of celebration—although this woman was Hispanic. Later I asked her why she chose that as her ringtone. She said, “Oh, I just thought it was a pretty song.” Because my mother and I are Jewish, it was like a message from the beyond. So I am a believer in that way, and I’ve had enough miraculous experiences that have made me less afraid of death.
I think it’s an accumulation of life experience, plus spiritual practice, that pushes us over the edge to a moment of enlightenment or awakening. In religious terms, you might call it grace.
From my religious studies, I’ve come to understand that we just don’t pop into this new place where we’re not afraid of death anymore out of nowhere; it’s a lifelong practice. Then there is going through periods like Covid, where so many people were dying and death is in the air. These are quickening agents. They push many people over the edge into a surprising, new, and calmer relationship with the subject.
Smoley: It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Death of Ivan Ilyich, but as I remember, the punchline is that as Ivan Ilyich is dying, he realizes that everything that he’d been preoccupied with in his life had little or no significance whatsoever. I’m wondering how you would fit that realization into the concept of aging spiritually.
Orsborn: I would experience that differently. It’s not that nothing matters or mattered; it’s that you see it is all of a piece, that it was all love. I think we come from love, and we go to love. That was the big realization I had during Covid: I had this visceral sense that I had been being pushed through life by fear, from the moment of birth, that moment of separation and the original wound, with the doctor’s slap on your bottom, and your crying as the harsh air comes into your lungs. There was a sense of being pushed forward by fear, feeling that it was about trying to win approval in order to survive and to create masks in order to dull the pain of being too exposed.
During Covid, the miracle that happened for me is that I felt that same love that I had felt before I was born, reaching out from the future and grabbing me forward. It was as if my life pivoted from being chased by fear to being pulled by love. Since then, that feeling has never left me.
It’s not that I’m not afraid sometimes, but as Einstein said, the most important question you have to ask yourself is: is this a friendly universe or not? I answer that yes, this is a friendly universe. I believe that even if bad things happen to me and other people, there is a greater reality beyond everyday life. That’s perhaps what Tolstoy was talking about. We get intimate intimations of it from time to time, and if we’re doing aging as a spiritual experience, the older we get, the more we have these moments of breakthrough.
Smoley: Have you ever worked with A Course in Miracles?
Orsborn: Yes. A friend of mine gave me a whole volume, and I read it from cover to cover and loved it. However, when I had breast cancer, a lot of people were using A Course in Miracles and other New Age philosophies to say, we create our reality; we create our illness. I couldn’t buy that. It was too harsh for me. My attitude back then was, “If this is a gift from God, I’d like to give it back. Does God take returns?”
Many influences have brought me to two foundational principles: First, you have to accept reality for what it can’t help being. Second is, you can feel beloved no matter what, because you are beloved, no matter what.
Anything beyond that is subject to debate and exploration and curiosity, but to me, those are the foundational principles upon which I test my own and other people’s spirituality, at least in terms of my life.
Smoley: Thank you; that’s very beautiful. As you say, many New Age people have been implying, if not stating, that disease is the sufferer’s fault. But guilt about illness is much more pervasive than that. If you have lung cancer, is it your fault because you were smoking? Many people act that way. America is a society that is predicated on inflicting guilt on everyone else.
Orsborn: As much as possible, especially when it’s commercially advantageous.
Smoley: Even apart from the New Age, people are often led to think one way or another that if you’re sick or aging or frail, it’s somehow your fault.
Orsborn: This culture worships power and the illusion of power, as well as the idea that we should be able to control our destinies. Even now, the best-selling books on aging are basically saying that if you fear aging, if you don’t want to do aging, don’t do it. Just stay in midlife forever. And if, God forbid, you should get an illness or start to look infirm, you’d better go hide behind a gated community; you’d better take yourself out fast.
Aging is considered an illness in popular culture. But this misses the truth that aging is a life stage with meaning and purpose of its own; I believe it has an evolutionary purpose, otherwise we wouldn’t grow old.
This society has denied even looking at this issue. Why? Because people who really understand serious aging are not going to be big consumers of products or manipulatable by power structures. We start to have a direct contact with our inner wisdom and powers greater than ourselves, which is dangerous to society.
Smoley: Let’s focus a little more on your work specifically. Let’s say I’m coming to you cold and saying, “I’m getting old. I’m kind of worried about it. It must have something to do with spirituality, although I don’t know what that is.” How would you start to work with that person?
Orsborn: Well, you know, the gift is aging itself. That’s the teacher, not me. By the time they come to me, they are partially deconstructed and saying, “Help! I don’t want to do this alone. It is scary.” But it’s like any void. Say you clasp your hands; this is the status quo. Then you have to move your hands into another position. There’s a moment of letting go, of emptiness.
These people are asking, “Is there something better? Is there another way? Does it have to be this painful?” The answer, I’m afraid, is, yes, it does have to be that painful: confronting the reality of death, illness, and loss, and feeling anger and regret. Those are painful experiences.
But this is why I say aging is a natural, spiritual experience, and both teacher and practice: How many people have taken course after course trying to erode their ego? They understand that their egos have a grip on them and that they’re attached to images of the past, and they would like to have a more spiritual, more loving persona. They want to be less invested in their things and who they used to be. With aging, you don’t need a yoga mat. Just look in the mirror: that will do wonders for eroding your ego.
The flip side of eroding your ego is the birth of humility, and humility is the birthplace of all true spirituality—the overcoming of the arrogant belief that this is our show, that we’re calling the shots, that God ought to do what we tell God to do. True humility says, “I can’t stop all the bad things from happening, but I can’t stop the good things from happening either, so I need to look at life differently. I need to look at it with curiosity rather than dread.”
That’s a huge turning point. The minute that you can add that little element, you can have dread and then have curiosity about that dread. The kind of people that that come to me are already having some kind of awakening, but they’re in the discomfort part of it.
Fortunately or unfortunately, right now I’m a main connector of people, a way for them to find each other. There’s a grassroots movement that’s building up around the organizations I’m involved with, like Sage-ing International and Spirit of Sophia, and my book Spiritual Aging, because it contains weekly reflections for embracing life. I’ve been hearing about convents, old people’s homes, community centers and friendship groups who are working these readings one week at a time.
We were ashamed of our aging. It was something we were doing in secret. It’s a revolutionary and radical act to step out of the guilt, the shame, and the self-isolation coming out of what other people might be thinking of us and moving into this new place of finding out that we’re not in this alone. We’re learning from one another who we are and how we’re handling aging, and other people can point out the water we’re swimming in that we’re not even seeing. It’s an exciting time for those of us who are finding each other, and scary as heck until you do.
Smoley: As you suggested, many of the people who are drawn to this kind of work were, in a sense, already drawn to it. They may not be completely open, but they’re at least a little open. But what about the large portion of the aging population who seem to have done the exact opposite? They’ve become frozen, almost as a survival technique.
Orsborn: Here’s the truth about aging: I believe you become more of who you are, who you really are, as you age, and there are only two choices. One is being contracting, constructing more armor, shrinking your world, getting more invested in old paradigms, trying to exert more power. That is all contraction.
The other choice is expansion: opening your heart, being curious, being honest. All the spiritual masters that I’ve read say that that is our choice in life. It may not feel as if you have a choice, but you do. Are you going to be the kind of person who gets smaller and lets your challenges and issues turn you hard and wrinkly and self-protective, like a wrinkled old apple? Or are you going to take the risk? It’s a giant risk, it’s a huge leap of faith, be closer to death, and open your heart and say, “I believe this is a friendly universe. I believe I can be beloved, however my life looks to myself and to other people. I’m going to take that leap of faith.” That is the choice we have to make.
Smoley: Thank you. That’s very apt. Last night I was watching a TV show called Hacks.
Orsborn: I love that show.
Smoley: The young woman in it is going through all sorts of crises in her life, and she’s talking to her mother across the country on the phone. The mother’s neurotically worried and obsessed about the slightest things. The young woman can’t discuss anything in her life with her mother in any real way.
This seems to be a very common situation. I think it was very true of our generation: you didn’t tell your parents anything, because they would worry about it, which would just make everything worse. How do you see that phenomenon? How do you see the best way to deal with it?
Orsborn: I’m a member of Al-Anon. Al-Anon is the Twelve-Step program that has to do with loving other people too much, or loving them in the wrong way, in a controlling way.
It’s so counterintuitive, because you think you’re being a good mother when you’re trying to save your kids, or when you hold them so close that it’s too painful to hear them talk about their problems.
One of the things I’ve learned from the Twelve-Step program is detaching with love. How can you be a loving witness to somebody going through hard times without feeling it’s your job to heal them, cure them, save them?
That’s a core principle of individuation; it is, the psychologists teach us, is the healthy way for families to individuate. For people in different generations to grow in tandem, it requires a certain amount of letting go, but not without love.
I’d say our relationships with our adult children is probably the number one stumbling block, even for people who’ve done spiritual practices all their lives. They say, “I’m so enlightened. I’ve been through all this, and I could save you from so much. Why don’t you just do what I tell you to do?”
We forget that we can’t protect our children from life. That’s why my first principle, was, if you recall, you can’t stop reality from being what it can’t help being. That acceptance is a part of the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Smoley: Another issue today that weighs on people of all ages is the polarized political scene. Whatever side you’re on in this tug-of-war, chances are you’re upset about it.
It’s always those people. Those people are no good. Everything would be great except for those people. Whether those people are Republicans, Democrats, or whatever is almost a mere matter of taste. This polarization troubles many people. Maybe they’re even projecting or displacing their own fear of death onto the political situation. How do you suggest that people deal with their upsets about politics?
Orsborn: I am one of those people that worry about complacency masquerading as spirituality. I think you need to know where you stand. You need to know what your values are, and you need to know when you’re up against values that you find abhorrent. I think that’s one of the gifts of aging: to know who you are and what you believe to be true and important.
Now that said, I believe very much in people listening to their own heart in terms of their callings. Are you called to be a protester? Are you called to write books? Are you called to go to jail for your principles?
We are all deeply called, but spiritual people can get tripped up by a confusion between what their gut is telling them and what their heart is telling them, which is very easy to do.
To younger people, I’m going to say, please save our society. Please act in the world on what you believe. We did. We tried. Please take your turn and try it.
But many older people have seen their dreams crumble in recent years and realize they might not see their dreams come true in this lifetime. They’ll say to me, “I feel really guilty that I am not out there doing everything I can. I know I should be protesting, doing acts of civil disobedience.”
“OK, you feel guilty and bad,” I say. “But where are you being called right now? Look into your heart and tell me what, at this exact moment of time, you really wish you were doing.”
Often they’ll say something like, “Oh, God! I just wish I could just go out in my garden and garden. I just wish I could sit down with a good book, you know. I wish I could go out for coffee with a good friend.”
“That is your heart calling you,” I say. “Your heart is not always calling you to do the hardest, scariest thing. Sometimes it’s as simple as cleaning your drawers out. Stop to listen to your heart, and stop second-guessing it and arguing with it. You may need time out working in your garden, or sewing, or whatever it is. It may be your way of grieving, your way of opening yourself up to new levels of compassion and maybe to a breakthrough of creativity.
If you’re meant to stay involved in the world, or take a political stand or engage in civil disobedience, you’ll know. Until you know, take the time to not know, to be in curiosity and exploration and self-nurturing. Many of us need a lot of self-nurturing right now.
As I mentioned, my book Spiritual Aging contains daily readings for the year. Some of the passages speak to this very issue, such as, “When was the last time you looked to see if the moon was still out in the early morning?” “Have you checked to see if there’s a bird flying by your window?” “Does your favorite tree have snow melting off its branches?” “What pictures are the clouds drawing in the sky?”
When you take the time to appreciate all that you’ve been given, you are awestruck with life. You’ve had disappointments; of course you have. There are things you wish had worked out differently. You’ve missed opportunities. You’ve made mistakes. But today, all you have to do is look out the window to be reminded that when you’ve been stripped bare, the veil between your heart and the mystery is thin indeed. Take advantage of this precious moment to experience the abundance of miracles that effortlessly surround you, just patiently waiting for you to notice.
Many of the people have said they’re afraid of death and dying or aging. If they’re doing their spiritual homework, if they are connected to their hearts and allowing themselves to be supported later in life, they may find joy beyond anything we’ve imagined.
Smoley: Beautiful. We’ve covered quite a bit, and I’m wondering if you have anything you want to add.
Orsborn: The word that comes to my mind is simplicity. Many people experience economic impacts when they’re older.
They’re downsizing or moving into assisted living facilities and have had to pare all their lifelong belongings down to fit into one room.
At first, the thought of having to let go of our big lives, with its cars and travel, is horrifying. But in my experience, the hard part of growing older is going from midlife into old age, not becoming old as such. Until you arrive to old, you can’t imagine how glorious old can be. Until then, you’re regretting the losses, you’re hanging on, and you’re feeling the pain. You’re going to have to trust me that, even with the pain of old age, there is still an ecstasy and a passion about it that is possible—not guaranteed, but possible, and that’s enough to keep us going.